Mitchell’s laws: Reduced money growth never stimulates economic growth. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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The problem the Republicans face is quite simple: They pander to lunatics. They claim to be patriots, while divorcing themselves from everything America stands for:

They worship the wealthy and denigrate the poor. They wish to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment compensation, while maintaining tax cuts for the wealthy.

This was a party I once believed in and voted for, because I felt it had a better handle on business, the foundation of the American economy. Today, they have allowed themselves to be drawn into an unholy blend of Tea Party, ultra-right, fascist, deregulation, anarchy – a mentality that benefits the wealthiest and increases the income gap, while endangering the middle class and the poor.

Sadly, the Democrats have been drawn to the right, and are neither liberal nor neoliberal. They comes closest to neoconservatism, though in truth they are an amalgam of ill-fitting ideas designed – like the Republicans – to gain support from whichever extreme groups can provide the most money, now.

Today’s politicians replace personal morality with a cynical win-at-all-costs drive, having nothing to do with patriotism, family, freedom, America or the American people. Is it any wonder that today’s politicians have the lowest job approval ratings in history? (Just 13 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of the way Congress is handling its job, while 84 percent disapprove – its worst rating in poll results since 1974. Sixty-five percent disapprove “strongly,” a vast level of high-intensity criticism. – http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/congress-hits-a-new-low-in-approval-obama-opens-election-year-under-50/ )

The above diatribe was provoked by the following article:

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

Will Romney Regret Immigration Stance?
Seth Mandel, 01.17.2012

What happens when the presumptive GOP nominee is taking fire on immigration from Republican groups, and even a Republican governor who has attracted speculation she might be considered for the vice presidential nomination? The Wall Street Journal reports:

Mitt Romney’s embrace of Kris Kobach, the man behind a spate of laws intended to rid states like Arizona of illegal immigrants, is drawing fire from Hispanic Republicans and immigrant advocates who say the GOP front-runner has damaged his chances of attracting Latino voters in the presidential election.

“Romney committed political suicide when he received Kobach’s endorsement,” said DeeDee Garcia Blase, founder of Somos Republicans, a grassroots Latino Republican group.

Romney has chosen immigration as one area to run to the right of his rivals to shore up his conservative credibility. But as a general-election issue, Romney may have put himself in a box. Romney is not just to the right of Gingrich and Perry on the issue; he’s to the right of every Republican presidential nominee in recent history.

If you support hard-line policies to curb illegal immigration, at some point you have to ask yourself whether your plan really calls for the deportation of 6.4 million adults (out of the 10.2 estimated total) who have been in this country for at least a decade, almost half of whom have children under the age of 18. If the answer is yes, you are left with two follow-up questions: Can this in any way be considered realistic? And presuming you do not accomplish this (for a host of reasons), have you just told 3 million parents in the demographic that accounted for 56 percent of the nation’s population growth in the last decade that your party wants them and their children out?

Here would be an honest speech for any of today’s candidates:

“I deeply and irrevocably always have believed whatever you want me to believe, so long as you have votes and/or money, but I someone comes along with more money and/or votes, and wants me to change my deeply-felt, unchanging convictions, I’ll turn on a dime. Are you for or against abortion? Me, too. Same if you’re for or against tax increases, immigration, religion in schools, divorce, gay marriage, stem cells, Israel, marijuana, food stamps, guns or any other single issue you can name.

Your brain can’t hold two things simultaneously, so I know you’ll vote for just one issue and the most stupid, lying politician you can find.” Hey, that’s me.

We voters have only ourselves to blame, because we have become narrow, one issue dolts. Don’t believe me? Look at the losers who have the gall to run for the most powerful job in the world, the President of the United States of America. There actually are people who have supported these fools, but like the politicians, now have changed their minds.

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9 Responses to –What is your ideal for the most powerful job in the world: President of the United States?

Do you see anyway to reverse this trend? The closet thing I see is the Occupy Wall St movement. They might not have all the answers, but it seems the motivation behind the movement is a sincere pushback against that which you describe in this post.

America is such a conservative country. Control of the House was given back to the GOP partly because Americans wanted to put the brakes on President Obama’s agenda – an agenda that, outside of its obsession with deficit reduction, is built for the benefit of the 99 percent.

A large segment of America will only vote for socially and fiscally conservative candidates. This leads to a Congress and Supreme Court stacked with right-wingers who couldn’t care less about the 99 percent unless they’re still in their mother’s womb.

I don’t agree with you that “America is such a conservative country.” The extent to which that is true seems to be superficial. The word Liberal has been denegrated so much (just like “Socialism”) that many people don’t like to identify themselves with the word. i.e. many people like to think of themselves as Conservative. You know: hard working! believe in God! Not a hippy! Not living off the government’s tit!

But when people are polled on specific issues, and when these issues are not identified with the word Conservative or Liberal, a much different picture emerges. This picture paints America to be much more liberal than many people believe it is.

We can thank Big Money and a highly effective public relations industry for all of this doublethink. George Orwell would be proud (or horrified).

1. Education, primarily. Allow the poor kids to opt out of the failing schools.
2. Education, again.
3. ditto
4. For someone from a backgound other than the white middle-class college-bound suburb, (someone else pointed this out too) the first thing to learn is how to show up every day, ready to work. Personal habits. And JG activites would include (if I were king) training. Starting with a GED, if that’s what is needed.

If you raise a kid in an environment where the rewards go to the most clever criminal rather than to those who obey the rules and put in the most effort, then what sorts of behavior do you think that kid will emulate? With all our prosperity, the least we can do is provide an envionment that is conducive to success, rather than failure.

Yea…it amazes me how many people still think that all they have to do is elect their favorite candidate into office and everything will be okay. Obama was a prime example.

I’d vote for Romney. He’s a policy wonk and has a lot of turnaround experience. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had an independently found, working knowledge of MMT/MS. And yes, I don’t count on him to live up to all the stupid rhetoric (thankfully).